Meikall Greylark
Meikall Amelaurd Greylark is one of the MSI's top Lord Admirals. Born into one of the six noble families on New Carradock, Meikall is one of the heirs to the Greylark landhold and holds the title of Lord within the Imperium. Biography Early Life WIP Meikall Amelaurd Greylark was born on New Carradock to the wealthy Greylark family. His parents, Lord Mordaunt and Lady Betha Greylark, presided over the Greylark estate and landhold on New Carradock. The fiefdom-like Greylark landhold, like many of the Velonnian Imperium's nobility-run landholds, was a complex and inter-dependent system that covered over a sixth of New Carradock's total landmass, consisting of assorted agricultural communities responsible for providing much of the food needs for the landhold as well as the rest of the Imperium, a number of minor industrial corporations and facilities, and several cities and sprawling communities. The Greylark family was also expected to maintain a sizable military force as well as a defensive naval fleet. Meikall, along with his three brothers and sister, Gregorei, Denaro, Tyman and Jenithe, was an heir to this position and duty, and thus, when growing up, was taught extensively how to maintain and manage the landhold. This included learning economics and agriculture, as well as meeting and getting to know the people who worked within the landhold well. And later in life, it meant learning military command. Academy Days WIP At the age of 19, Meikall, along with his brothers Gregorei and Denaro, was accepted into the Eckhart Academy of Naval Tactics, New Carradock's prestigious naval school which, though not regarded as equal to the Academy on Velonna itself, ranked as one of the best in the Velonnian Imperium's key worlds. At Eckhart Academy, he was assigned under the tutelage of Senior Cadet Drake Collinsire (the practice at the academy was to pair off fresh students with the more experienced ones. The senior cadets would help the new ones by teaching everything they had learned themselves, helping the junior cadet to learn faster and ensuring the senior cadets had a firm grasp on what they had already been taught). Meikall became fast friends with the intelligent and charismatic Drake, and with his instruction Meikall rapidly grasped various tactics and implemented them with great success in the academy's wargames, resulting in the duo quickly gaining a reputation as two of the best officer cadets there. Hope Lorewick WIP Two years after his enrollment at the Academy, Meikall left Drake's care and advanced to becoming a Senior Cadet himself, earning over four dozen strategic commendations in the process. It was at this time that he met another student: Hope Lorewick. Hope was a girl of nearly 16 years of age hailing from a noble family in the outlying world of Cape Labyrinth, who, despite having already been at Eckhart for eight months, was struggling to learn and continue advancing. And as Meikall was a star student, the head trainers of the Academy assigned Hope to learn under him. Despite having received poor grades and demerits to that point, Hope proved to be a surprisingly good student under Meikall's care, quickly catching up on what she had previously failed in and even excelling at times. As Meikall helped her learn her assignments and continued to progress himself, he also began to grow romantically attracted to Hope, who, despite the five year age difference between them, he found to be intelligent, pretty, and kind-hearted. Meikall worked ever harder to help her succeed in her studies and in the Academy wargames, and also began to treat her to dinners in the nearby city on a frequent basis, take her on long walks around the outskirts of the campus, and spend all his free time being with her. After four months of this the two became very close, and Meikall finally built up the courage to ask her to marry him, which she accepted without the slightest hesitation. Meikall and Hope were granted a two-year leave, and their formal courtship began. They left for the Greylark estate and then for the Lorewick landhold on Cape Labyrinth, getting to know each other's family, making multiple trips between the two families' homes over the next three months, and during this time the Greylark and Lorewick families became friendly with each other. At the end of the third month, they held their wedding and were finally married. Meikall was 22 years old and Hope, 17 at the time of their marriage. They spent the rest of their leave on New Carradock at the Greylark home. Meikall dedicated his most of his time to being with Hope, but also spent a portion with his father, learning how to run their landhold for when the time would come for Meikall and his siblings to inherit it, and also with Edward Lorewick, Hope's industrious and friendly uncle. Less than a year later Hope gave birth to their daughter, Patience Betha Greylark-Lorewick, whom they raised for the final ten months of their leave. Finally the time came for them to go back to the Academy and fulfill their military duty. Patience remained in the care of her extended family, and Meikall and Hope went back to Eckhart to complete their studies, paying frequent visits to the Greylark estate to spend time with their daughter and the rest of the family. Three years later both Meikall and Hope had graduated from Eckhart Academy with honors. Due to the Velonnian Imperium's peacetime status at that point, there was little need for new officers within the Velonnian Navy, and both of them remained on New Carradock, helping the Greylarks handle the landhold and also accepting teaching positions within Eckhart to continue training other officers. Velonnian Civil War WIP However, on the capital world of Velonna, the government of the Imperium began to grow more and more tense. Heated talks between the Velonnian Emperor and the other leading politicians gave way to attempts at secession by assorted key worlds, which the government tried--unsuccessfully--to quell. High-ranking officials and top military commanders scrambled to acquire naval fleets and standing armies, secure their territorial holdings, and wrest what they could from the others and from those who remained loyal to the Emperor. In a matter of mere weeks the situation went from arguing to anarchy and civil war. As they were effectively still members of the military, Meikall and Hope were called to join the conflict. In spite of their training as naval officers, both of them were assigned to become Imperial soldiers, as the Navy already had an overabundance of excellent naval commanders and most were selected from Velonna's own academy. {NEW IDEA: The Velonnian Republic wants to keep nobility out of high-ranking positions as a show of favor to common citizens} Hope was made a sharpshooter and field scout within the 32nd Imperial Rangers--it was discovered that she had extensive training with rifle marksmanship and was a superb shot--and given the rank of Corporal before being shipped off to the rural outlying worlds. Meikall was designated as a lieutenant and assigned to the 88th Imperial Naval Shock Marines, a cadre of elite super-soliders in heavy combat hardsuits who frequently were sent to board and capture enemy warships, were dropped from orbit directly into combat, and fought in tight and deadly urban environments. After an intense training regimen, Meikall was sent directly to Velonna and the heart of the bloody civil war. Meikall's first deployment was an orbital drop into the lower city regions of Urbis Magnus, Velonna's capital city. The mission was to retake a vital interstellar relay transceiver, which had been taken by one of the secessionist warlords and heavily fortified. Upon dropping into the city, the 88th Naval Marines fought through some of the most hardened enemy troops on Velonna and their supporting complement of battle tanks and aerial gunships. The 88th fought through the lower city, taking advantage of Urbis Magnus' dense architecture to minimize confrontations with the relay's vehicular defenders while moving for the relay. However, it took two days straight of intense fighting, and roughly twenty-percent losses to the 88th's numbers, to finally reach it. Upon making it there, however, they found themselves in an ambush: the warlord had, in anticipation of their attack, moved multiple sharpshooter units to the area. The warlord's sharpshooters, armed with high-caliber long-range projectile rifles, kept the Naval Marines pinned them down, and their company commander, Major Bly Gerhart, also died in the initial ambush after a round successfully penetrated his hardsuit, followed by his head. Morale rapidly dropped among the leaderless 88th, and they remained unable to engage the sharpshooters for several hours, until finally Meikall, with a few of the company's best shots, dismounted from their hardsuits and engaged in several long-range firefights with the enemy, taking a few casualties but eventually clearing out enough that the 88th could press forward and into the relay station. Inside, they reactivated it, reestablishing FTL communications between Velonna and the Imperial forces elsewhere. Due to the loss of Major Gerhart, and for his actions in counter-attacking the sharpshooters, Meikall was awarded a field-promotion by the Imperial Marine Command to the rank of Captain and placed as the 88th's temporary leader until a new commander could be assigned to them. Over the next several months, that replacement never came, and Captain Meikall Greylark remained their informal commander. Many of the 88th resented the fact that Meikall, a fresh recruit on his first mission, had somehow managed to finagle command of the entire company in spite of so many of them having spent months or even a few years within the 88th's elite ranks. However, Meikall slowly proved himself to be a competent leader, retaining his talent for easily grasping strategy to counterbalance his inexperience as a soldier, and eventually the 88th warmed up to him more. The 88th remained on Velonna for a long time, slowly but steadily retaking the world more and more as the Emperor's forces pushed the enemy back off Velonnian soil. Soon nearly the entire planet had been retaken. Afterward, the 88th was sent back to space to secure Velonna's orbital stations and emplacements, as well as its moon. Finally, the Imperium was in a position to reorganize its military on Velonna and begin making strikes on the warlords' holdings. Meikall and the 88th Marines, in the coming year, would fight inside warships as both a boarder or a defender, drop down into the capital cities of the Imperium's key worlds and retake them from bitter resistance, and assault bases and space installations in his service to the Emperor. Casualty rates among both the 88th and the Imperial military as a whole reached their peak, fresh recruits were few and far-between, and any semblance of morale they had at the outbreak of the civil war steadily withered away. Through it all, Meikall somehow making it through alive and largely unscathed. However, it was in doubt if this would last. Already, only thirty percent of the 88th's original number were still living, the rest of the company being composed of replacements from other Marine companies. Fortunately for him, a turn in his career would soon come. Eighteen months into the war, the 88th was given a mission: to board and destroy the Flag Dreadnought of Warlord Thranon Paulus, which had docked for refueling above one of Paulus' worlds, Vedyre. An Imperial Navy task force was sent to Vedyre and engaged the docked Dreadnought and its escort, and the 88th, along with three other Naval Marine companies, successfully assaulted and boarded the ship. Once onboard, the four Naval Marine companies pushed their way for the ship's weak points to sabotage them and destroy the ship. However, they were met with heavy resistance from the Flag Dreadnought's defenders, a large portion of which were also Naval Marines, and the two companies en route to the Dreadnought's reactor were pinned down in one of the secondary maintenance corridors and took heavy losses. Because the entire mission hinged on the successful sabotaging of the reactor so as to leave the ship helpless against the Imperial task force, which was now virtually impossible due to the two Marine companies' losses, the task force retreated from the system, leaving the Naval Marines behind. Sensing their dire decision, Meikall rallied the remaining Naval Marines and formulated a new plan. The 88th pushed for the command bridge of Paulus' Dreadnought, taking heavily losses but managing to seize it, and what was left of the other Naval Marine companies took defensive positions to protect the bridge. The Dreadnought's captain, one of many less-than-loyal (or "pragmatically-minded" as they preferred to call it) secessionist officers who had left the Imperium to join the other warlords, had no qualms about betraying Paulus to save his own neck and readily gave most of the command codes for the ship's computerized systems. Meikall, his extensive training as a naval officer flooding readily back to him, took command of the Dreadnought and engaged in a brief fight with Paulus' other warships stationed above Vedyre before successfully jumping out of system and lowering the ship's shields so the Dreadnought could be captured by the Imperial ships that had just previously abandoned them. For his role in capturing the Dreadnought for the Imperium, as well as its crew of over 65,000 personnel who had betrayed the Emperor for Paulus, and also because the Velonnian Imperium was by now short on experienced fleet officers, Meikall was given a transfer to a command position within the Imperium's Navy and appointed as a Fleet Commander. His new command, the light battlecruiser INS Inverness, was made the flagship of a small battlegroup that was frequently tasked with making deep strikes into the territories of minor warlords, wreaking havoc on their supply lines and fleets, and quickly making a name for himself. He would continue to fight for the rest of the war, gradually rising through the ranks and receiving larger and larger commands. However, while the Emperor's Loyalists would have many great victories and even remove several of the warlords and other secessionist factions from the fighting, they were being pushed deeper and deeper into their own main territories by some of their more prosperous enemies, as well as a newer group, the Minotaur Mercenary Force, which was headed by a now-infamous and extremely capable commander known as Admiral Damirius. Meikall would eventually find himself near his native New Carradock. He learned that the Greylark Family landhold's provincial Navy was now leaderless, as his father and two older brothers, who had been appointed as the Greylark fleet and militia's commanders, had all been killed in action earlier in the war. As a result, Meikall was assigned as Fleet Admiral of his family's force and tasked with defending what remained of the Velonnian Imperium at all costs. For the better part of a year afterward, he and the Imperium's other lead commanders participated in some of the most intense fights in the innermost territories, working to press back the enemies closing in on the Imperium's heart, or at least to wear them down and force them into a stalemate. However, it was extremely demoralizing for Meikall. As he was forced closer to Velonna by the conflict, the growing corruption of the Emperor became more and more evident. The regal leader he had so valiantly fought for during the war always remained within the comfort and seclusion of his palace-stronghold on Velonna, often ignoring the hardships of the Imperium's citizens, the collapsing economy, and the constant destruction that always followed in the wake of such wars as this. The Velonnian Emperor would also pay little attention to the war, giving only a handful of poorly-thought-out instructions to his lead commanders, such as suicidal all-out attacks, or to leave behind vital systems in favor of whatever more-politically-important worlds he happened to prefer. Even worse for Meikall, there had been no time to find out what had happened to Hope, and also had heard nothing of the rest of his family except that they had gone off to his wife's distant homeworld of Cape Labyrinth early during the war. Eventually, the bloody Velonnian Civil War grew close to an end. The Imperial Loyalists had lost most of their navy and army, and only Velonna and a tiny handful of minor surrounding worlds were still held. Most of the warlords had either been killed, had their militaries crushed, or had fled to ground, but Admiral Damirius' Minotaur Mercenary Force was still strong and had the Velonnian Imperium outnumbered and outgunned, with an excess of accumulated resources and territory to reinforce his own military. Also, on Velonna, mass riots were breaking out, demanding that the Emperor be deposed and that they surrender to Damirius. During the last battle, Damirius and his Minotaur Squadron were assaulting Velonna itself. Several of the capital planet's defensive orbital battlestations had been knocked out, and multiple holes punched through the Loyalist fleet's line of battle. The Emperor issued his final objective: Fight to the last man, and stop them at all costs, even using the most suicidal of tactics if need be. It was then that Meikall made his decision. Regrouping his fleet, he sent a transmission to the Minotaur forces, then wheeled his fleet around and ordered them to open fire- with the firm objective of disabling rather than destroying if at all possible- on the Velonnian Loyalists. He noticed that several commanders were doing the same, and quickly the Minotaur Mercenary Force had broken past the defenders' lines. The rest of the battle, include the fighting on the surface, ended quickly. The Emperor was removed, and Admiral Damirius selected as Velonna's new leader. None of the remaining factions dared oppose Damirius, who had the backing of almost all of the pre-war Imperium's worlds and an enormous military compared to theirs, and they quickly conceded to him. Personality and Traits WIP Category:Majestas Sempiternus Imperium Category:Characters